


Broken

by nickelsissocool



Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel (Comics), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Civil War (Marvel), M/M, Off-screen Character Death, One Shot, Stream of Consciousness, Tony Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-30
Updated: 2013-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-06 23:08:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/741241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nickelsissocool/pseuds/nickelsissocool
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When things fall apart, they fall apart bad. Tony doesn't feel like the bad guy here, but damn, Steve was the best good thing Tony had. Now he truly has nothing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken

**Author's Note:**

> Again, this was inspired by a [ post ](http://stark-spangled.tumblr.com/post/24659493845/tonydowneyjr-it-kills-me-every-fucking) on tumblr. Check that out first!

It had been a Thursday. Tony remembers that incredibly distinctly. Tony always had a knack for figuring out why things got broken and how to fix it. These days, he thinks a lot about that Thursday, because when Tony mentioned at breakfast that day that he had joined the pro-Registration ranks as a consultant, he knew immediately that something had snapped.

The warmth, the companionable atmosphere of their kitchen seemed to immediately dissipate, like all the air had been flushed out of the room. Steve. Oh, Steve hadn’t said anything, but his eyes had glazed over, suddenly empty. Tony knew it meant something, but couldn’t figure out what exactly.

Still, normalcy was never overrated, so Tony kissed Steve’s cheek on the way out, just like any other normal day. But somehow, it has been seared in his memory how Steve minutely flinched at the small intimate touch. That flinch.

That evening, when Tony came home from three back-to-back meetings with Hill about implementing the Act, he arrived to the sight of Steve sitting completely still at their kitchen table, as if he had not moved an inch since Tony left. It was so eerie that sometimes he has nightmares where Steve is just sitting there - staring with empty eyes, tight lips, and sunken skin.

Tony went to their room to change into something a little more comfortable, babbling the entire way and back about Reed Richards’ ideas for implementation, Dr. Pym’s indecision, and Hill’s general no-nonsense attitude which had been a constant buzz-kill.

Still, when Tony came back to the kitchen Steve hadn’t budged. Tony felt his skin crawl.

When Tony finally calls Steve’s name, it’s meant to be a terse question, worry not even tentatively tinting his tone - at least, Tony tries for that. Then, like an animal waking from hibernation, which is just  _so like him_ , Steve starts his piece. About how S.H.I.E.L.D has changed, how misguided and corrupt the Act is, how this will endanger their lives and the lives of those they care about, how this will not protect the people who lay their lives on the line everyday trying to do good, how he just  _can’t_  support it and can’t stand with anyone who does, and blah blahblah blahblah. Because, as he argues, though he can’t stop himself from yelling, doesn’t Steve see that it’s the only way for the people to trust us again? Like Steve actually cares, like it actually affects him. Steve is just being dramatic - heroes can protect themselves. Can’t Steve just support Tony this one time? (Steve looks surprisingly offended at that one) Can’t Steve just get off his self-righteous martyr ass and get that we’re superheroes - we deserve to have the people know who really saved them from another global catastrophe.

Steve laughs a cold, low laugh that doesn’t sit well with Tony, not one bit. He growls about how Tony doesn’t get it because he IS Iron Man - he’s loved and famous and safe enough to not be a target. Tony already IS famous; he doesn’t have the luxury of any sort of normal life.  _What about Clint and Natasha?_  - Steve demands -  _What if they want to live normal lives where all the enemies they’ve made_ ** _can’t_** _know whom they are, where to find them, and what they look like? What about your buddy Bruce?_  - Steve hisses -  _Are you going to feel good when his picture is everywhere telling the world to watch out for the psycho green monster that can’t be stopped? Not everyone is as enamored with The Other Guy as you are, Tony. They’re going to hunt us down and eventually, if they can’t weaponize us, they’ll dispose of us - we’re a threat to their order._

 _Tony,_  he says, quietly this time,  _They’re just using you until they don’t need you anymore._

 _And you’re letting them._  He doesn’t have to say it, but it’s there and no, Tony is not thinking that and,  _shitshitshit_  no, Steve looks like he’s going to cry.

“I know some of the Act is shit, but I can fix it, I can make it -” he starts.

“You think you can fix everything, Tony, but guess what, you can’t. Think about the people who will be hurt by this, and if that doesn’t change your mind, think of what it will do to me, and hey, if that doesn’t work, then I guess you couldn’t fix that heart after all.” Then quieter still, choked from sheer grief, Steve murmurs, “And I don’t know if I can love someone with a broken heart.”

And well, what can Tony say to that? The world seems to slow in that instant, as though the balance of everything is resting on that moment and its outcome and…

And Tony just has to leave right fucking then because if he has to look at that expression of disappointment, betrayal, and disgust in Steve’s eyes for one more second, knowing that he’s the one who put it there, Tony’s going to scream. J.A.R.V.I.S, because he knows Tony so well, has already called him a taxi, and Tony is practically shaking with anger by the time it gets there.

Tony goes to one of the shittiest bars he knows and orders a drink. The first one he’s had in almost three years, since before he and Steve got involved. He downs it in one and gets another. And another one. And another one. And four hours later he’s pretty sure his tab is almost 10 grand. Pocket change, really. He orders another and suddenly he can’t breathe because it’s all too much, and his hand is shaking, like Steve’s flinch from the morning is asserting itself against the drink that nearly destroyed their friendship all those years ago, that drink that almost destroyed him, that monster inside Tony that keeps hurting Steve… And Tony can’t even…

He hurls the glass against the bar wall, glass shattering everywhere. He feels his cheek is cut and relishes the pain, because fuck you, Steve,  _you’re_  the one who is doing this.

The bartender sends him away on taxi, not before a handful of nosy fucking people have snapped his photo. Tony Stark… drunk out of his mind, bleeding, and muttering obscenities in a shithole bar at 1 am on a Friday morning… and yeah, Tony is getting the irony of being  _known_  to people, right about now.

It’s a blur, getting back home, but opening the door to find the place seemingly ransacked, that clear things up. Tony races around like an idiot, or more accurately, a lunatic, looking and hollering for Steve, seeing more and more things gone, just  _gone_. But then it hits him like a ton of bricks… it’s all Steve’s stuff that’s gone.

He falls to the floor hard at that thought, the impossible thought that Steve  _left him_. That Steve ripped himself and everything that was  _him_  out from the life they had tried to build together - and then just left, like it was nothing. Steve left him bleeding to death from the loss, from the sheer magnitude of the emptiness in the place Tony had called home. His heart had never felt so hollowed, so fake, so wrong. Tony contemplated for an instant taking out the arc reactor and just smashing it - just to see the devastation and hurt in Steve’s eyes.

This made him hate Steve even more, because that time when he had been drunk, before they were together, when Steve was leaving to head back to his room, Tony tried to make him stay by threatening to take his arc reactor out and never put it back in. Steve had looked shell-shocked and so fucking hurt, as he placed one of his warm hands over the hand Tony had himself placed teasingly over his arc reactor. Steve looked him square in the eyes and had said he wouldn’t leave… And there it was, he had given it to Steve, given his heart, given his fucking life to the man, and Steve had  _promised_. They were more than fucking married. And Steve had just left Tony, like he had never meant anything to him. And…

Tony doesn’t really remember the phone call he made. Or the phone calls, plural, that his phone bill would seem to indicate he made that night.

He just remembers feeling so mad, so useless, because he’s used to being able to understand how something breaks and how to fix it. This time, he still doesn’t quite know how they broke, and the worst part is that he doesn’t think he could ever fix it.

Now, three weeks after Captain Steve Rogers was killed, after leaving another message that will never be heard, Tony’s starting to think that they were broken from the start, because they had always been the best at hurting each other in the worst ways.

 


End file.
